Grow Your Followers With Student Stories

Gustavo Segui combined two foundational principles: 1) What systems are already in place that we could leverage? and 2) How do we make students the protagonists of their own stories? Find out how he accomplished both and as a result, tripled the International School of Curitiba’s followers and reach on Instagram simply by featuring students in their proudest moments.

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Key Takeaways

• Student Stories Drive Engagement: Authentic stories featuring students' achievements have the potential to reach significantly more accounts than traditional posts. For ISC, a student post outperformed similar posts featuring teachers and administrators by 10x or more.
• Build Relationships First: Get to know your students, their interests, and what they’re proud of. This fosters organic participation in sharing content.
• Start Small and Stay Intentional: You don’t need a massive team or hundreds of posts to see results. Consistently sharing one meaningful story per week can still generate significant impact.
• Measure What Matters: ISC focused on metrics like impressions, reach to non-followers, and follower growth, ensuring their content aligned with their broader marketing strategy.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Let students take center stage in showcasing their achievements. When students feel valued, they naturally want to share their stories with their own networks, increasing your reach.

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The Challenge: Expanding Instagram Reach Beyond the School’s Internal Community

ISC had an ambitious goal: grow its digital presence and engage new audiences beyond the internal school community. However, with limited resources, no dedicated digital team, and a minimal marketing budget, the challenge was daunting. The school needed a creative, cost-effective strategy to amplify its reach and attract more followers, particularly prospective high school students and their families.

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The Strategy: Systems Thinking Meets Social Media

Gustavo turned to systems thinking, a method of analyzing how different elements in an organization interact to create outcomes. This approach helped his team identify three key components:

1. Existing Resources: Students who were already achieving remarkable things in academics, arts, and extracurriculars.
2. Available Systems: Networks of students who were already sharing their successes with friends, family, and peers.
3. Opportunities for Interaction: The natural touchpoints where students’ stories could engage broader audiences, such as through Instagram posts, stories, and reels.

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How It Worked: Tapping Into Student Networks

The team crafted content that showcased students’ achievements, such as participation in coding clubs, international tournaments, and math competitions. By focusing on what students were proud of, ISC created authentic, engaging posts that students wanted to share with their own networks. Importantly, the school never explicitly asked students to share the content—pride in their achievements drove them to do so organically.

To test the approach, ISC compared three posts:

• A teacher video: Reached 1,700 accounts.
• A head of school video: Reached 3,500 accounts.
• A student story: Reached 35,000 accounts.

The results were clear: student-generated content had exponentially higher reach and engagement, especially with non-followers.

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Implementation Process

1. Build Relationships: The team spent time understanding students’ passions and what they wanted to share.
2. Align Content with Strategy: Posts aligned with ISC’s three key communication pillars: student success, doing things differently, and the importance of community.
3. Focus on Quality Over Quantity: The team shared one student story per week, keeping the process manageable while maximizing impact.
4. Track Metrics: ISC monitored impressions, reach to non-followers, and content interactions to measure success and refine their approach.

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Results

The Numbers Speak for Themselves

Over the course of the campaign, ISC saw:

• 278% Growth in Followers: The school nearly tripled its Instagram follower count within one semester.
• 241% Increase in Impressions: Content generated nearly 300,000 impressions in one quarter.
• 226% More Reach to Non-Followers: ISC significantly expanded its audience beyond the internal school community.
• 150% More Content Interactions: Engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares also saw dramatic growth.

The Real Win: Organic Sharing

The campaign succeeded because students were excited to share their stories with their own networks. By highlighting their achievements, ISC created content that felt genuine and relatable, leading to widespread organic sharing and amplified reach.

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Lessons Learned

1. Let Students Be the Protagonists: Showcasing students’ success stories authentically fosters pride and organic sharing.
2. Start with Strategy: Clearly define your communication pillars and let them guide your content creation. ISC’s three pillars—student success, doing things differently, and community—kept their messaging consistent and impactful.
3. Stay Realistic: Focus on the metrics and goals that matter most to your institution. Avoid comparing yourself to larger schools with massive budgets and teams.
4. Experiment and Evolve: What works today may not work tomorrow. Keep testing different types of content and approaches to stay ahead of changing trends.
5. Small Steps, Big Impact: Even with limited resources, thoughtful and intentional tactics can yield impressive results.

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Why This Tactic Works

By centering their strategy around students, ISC tapped into one of the most powerful forms of social proof: peer influence. Students’ authentic stories resonate more with their networks than traditional school-led campaigns. The focus on organic sharing also made the campaign highly cost-effective, demonstrating that institutions don’t need big budgets to achieve big results.

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